THE TABLET, March 5th, 1,955. VOL. 205, No. 5989

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MARCH 5th, 1955

NINEPENCE

Armed but not Federated: Europe and the Delayed Ratification

Unsolved Crisis in M oscow : Heirs to Malenkov. By Victor S. Frank I r i s h N e u t r a l i t y : The Paradox and its Justification. By Declan Costello

Paul Claudel: A Poet in the Christian Tradition. By Ernest Beaumont

The P iltd own Whodunit: A Study of Pithecanthropomorphism. By Sir Arnold Lunn

\ The Purpose o f H is to r y : Professor Knowles’ Inaugural. By Christopher Hollis

Anglicans and th e State: Maitland. Holdsworth and Canon Smyth

M ed ita tion s in Lent : III : The Resurrection of the Body. By Romano Guardini B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Beyond Neutrality, by M. V. C. Jeffreys ; The Weather Eye, by C. R.

Benstead ; Saint Thérèse o f Lisieux, by J. B. Morton ; The Poets Laureate, by Kenneth Hopkins ; The Pilgrimage, by Francis Stuart ; The Par Dwelling, by Rolanda Dauncey ; Love from a Convict, by Veronica Henriques ; Pompey's Head, by Hamilton Basso ; We Shall March Again, by Gerhard Kramer ; and Best s f edited by Edmund Crispin. Reviewed by A. C. F. Beales, Peter Bethell, Lancelot C. Sheppard, John Biggs-Davison, Roland Hill and

J. J. Curie.

DETERRENCE FOR FOUR YEARS “T F God should weary of mankind ” : Sir Winston XChurchill’s phrase on Tuesday was metrical, but characteristically untheological. If this is a hideous age, as he declared, we may maintain that it is, on the contrary, because mankind, or a part of mankind, is weary (if that is indeed the appropriate word) of God. The Prime Minister spoke of antagonisms in the world as deep as those of the Reformation “and its reactions which led to the Thirty Years’ War,” and spread not only through Europe but through all the world. “We have to some extent the geographical division of the Mogul invasion of the thirteenth century, but more ruthless and thorough.”

that the Americans should produce hydrogen bombs ; we must do so too, and not because it is necessary in order to obtain by joint Anglo-American production a sufficient number for the security of the Atlantic alliance, but because only thereby can we maintain a voice in whatever great decisions may confront the Americans inthehazardousfuture. “I cannot feel,” said Sir Winston, “that we can have much influence over their policy or actions, wise or unwise, while we are largely dependent, as we are today, on their protection.” When the profound division of the world is described in language so majestic and so unanswerable, it is lamentable that this should have to follow : suggesting a rivalry and lack of confidence between the leading partners in the free world.

Without pursuing either the theology or the history, but contemplating only the frightful picture as Sir Winston presented it, of a world at the best preserved from destruction only by fear, of a mere three or four years of probable respite before the Soviet Union will have not only plenty of hydrogen bombs but the means of delivering them on targets both here and in the United States, one lamentable fact is clear about the present. In this race to Armageddon there are not two but three runners. There is the tremendous effort to maintain the superiority of the free world over the Soviet Union in the weapons of doom. But there is also, and quite distinct from that, the tremendous effort of this country to keep abreast of the United States in the capacity to make bombs that obliterate populations. The United States race against the Soviet Union, and we race against the United States, guarding our secrets as the American secrets are guarded—for it is nine years since there has been a trans-Atlantic exchange of information in these overshadowing sciences. It is not enough

Deterrence may be in principle a perfectly moral procedure, and if hydrogen bombs are being made in the Soviet Union as a weapon at the best of intimidation and at the worst of destruction, then there can surely be no moral argument against using greater numbers of hydrogen bombs as a means of deterrence. But in this case deterrence at the best postpones matters, and can solve nothing. Sir Winston tells us that it cannot even postpone matters for long ; “saturation” point, with each half of the world able to annihilate the other, is nearer to us in time, he says, than VE Day. By the 1960s “saturation” will have been reached, and will have become, presumably, permanent. If one half of the world is still more powerful than the other, that is no longer relevant. It is less easy to be convinced that the manufacture of hydrogen bombs in this country is justified as a means of deterrence, and of support against America, for so very short a period.